


The Ego

by EmilysRose



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: AU, Cabins, F/M, Feminism, Frostbite, It now has a plot!, Kid Fic, Multi, Outdoors stuff, Polyamory, Slice of Life, emotional stuff, sexy retreat
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-11-16
Packaged: 2019-08-05 21:25:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16375274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilysRose/pseuds/EmilysRose
Summary: Freya is in a loveless marriage with Tamlin. One day, he suggests going to a sex retreat up in the cabins of California and she's surprised to find an old acquaintance, Rhysand, working the place.ORA claim fic for Aro that I tried to write and went totally left field. It's very feminist.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So here is a long, ranty story inspired by an Aro fic gone left field, my Family in the Modern Age class, and Danny Darco.

When my fiancé proposed the idea of going to a weeklong swinger’s party out in the country—I didn’t think much about it. Swingers was a word attached to a concept attached to my fiancé, Tamlin Spring. Swingers was a thought that came up when Tamlin came home from the office late, smelling like a woman’s Rubies and Diamonds perfume, the lipstick smeared so much on his mouth that his thick lips were nothing but a shade of dull pinkish red. It was the credit card statements for a hotel room rented twice every month, always on a Saturday afternoon when I was at the gym.

But of course, Tamlin wasn’t a swinger, not really. Swingers were consensual non-monogamists. To be a swinger he’d have to come to me and talk about it. There would be a conversation and a feeling of fulfillment—or at least my involvement—as we fucked other people to make our own relationship better. Tamlin was really just a frat-boy who’d grown up. Rich, white, and handsome, the world is open to his dick, freshly waxed and waiting with oil.

So I didn’t think much about it. A vacation out into the country sounded nice, even.

“Hand me that,” Tamlin said, not looking up from his phone as I drove down an old two-lane highway. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the sunglasses he’d thrown on the dashboard. On either side of us were rolling green valleys and tree-speckled hills that steadily rose higher till the grass stopped growing and the trees looked diminished and small. Stone rose high into jagged peaks, as if it reached high enough, it would rip a tiny hole in the sky at so at night there would be another star.

But stars are just memories of burning gas balls that imploded into themselves. They’ve been dead for longer than the earth’s been alive.

“What?” I asked, looking up from the road.

Tamlin really was handsome; chiseled jaw, great hair line, perfect skin, shining green and amber eyes. The kind of looks that can’t really be captured by anything. Pictures of him looked flat, unable to capture the charm that came from his eyes or his movements. Maybe a painter could capture him, something created with a human touch, something flawed that would pay attention to the tiny scar on his chin through the stubble, or capture the sultry and lazy way he sat and walked and fucked through his life. Or maybe not. It seemed, half the time, that Tamlin was only truly appreciated when he was compared to other men. No one else had such shiny hair. No one else had such a panty-dropping smile. Other men just looked… incomplete. Inelegant. So, if there was a painting of him, it would have to be done with averagely handsome men behind or under him, bemoaning their imperfection, holding up the things that gave them value to a modern woman: money, reputation. Anything but a good heart.

“Glasses, babe. Pay attention. It’s fucking bright outside.” He looked up then from his screen to squint his green eyes at the mountains. When you look out of a speeding car the small things blur past—but the big things always stay the same, just slowly turning so you could capture a different aspect of it. The world would be so much easier if you could drive a car through your mind, looking out to see what’s truly important as it gently turned and turned, other things blurring by to sometimes block the view, but never for long.

“They’re right in front of you, Tamlin. Get them your damn self.” I turned back to the road, watching him from the corner of my eye as his long fingers grabbed his sunglasses.

“You could be nicer to me, you know.” He said, sunglasses hiding his eyes.

“Oh, I know.” I turned just long enough to flash him a smile. It was a cruel smile, which felt cruel on my face.

Tamlin’s returning smile was blinding and just as cruel. But sexy—oh so sexy. “God, you’re such a bitch.”

“And what are you?” I asked, back to the road. It went on and on for miles, with nothing but nature and the occasional semi-truck. And us, I supposed. And the dozens of swingers ready to fuck through the week.

“Oh, I’m a son of a bitch, I suppose.” He leaned back, fingers blurring over his screen again. “If you think about it, that’s what the world is. Bitches and sons of bitches.”

“You’re calling your mother a bitch?” I’d never once met his mother. Three years of dating, a half year engaged and I’d never once met a member of his family. As far as I knew in three years he hadn’t seen them, either. Probably because they never called his secretary, Ianthe, to schedule an appointment with him.

He grunted. How did he make a grunt sound sexy? “Damn straight I am.”

After that, we dissolved back into our natural state of silence. It was rare, actually, to hold a conversation with Tamlin. We didn’t have much in common. We’d been raised on opposite sides of the coast, our parents didn’t know each other, we didn’t have friends in common or enjoy the same things. He didn't so much live at work as become his work, creating the image of a perfect politician, becoming his craft. My job as a painter kept money in the pocket but not in the bank. He worked out at a gym while I ran through a park. He watched movies and I read. His friends were all sons of bitches, and mine all bitches.

I don’t even know how we met, really. It had been random and sudden. I’d looked up from the book I was reading on a park bench and he was there, deciding to get a kale shake from a stall because he’d had carbs the night before. He’d looked at me and I’d looked at him and then we were fucking in the backseat of my car at 8 in the morning. He’d made me cum, which was rare enough that I was willing to answer his booty calls when it fit my schedule. Friends with benefits, I think it was called, only we weren’t friends.

It was all so strange and weird, actually looking back on it all and thinking about it in any capacity. It just kind of was. Me and Tamlin. Tamlin and I.

About a month into fucking him I was tired of the dirty looks and sneering all single women in their thirties inevitably get and I demanded he calls me his girlfriend. We’d cemented the damn thing with some oral—our version of a handshake, I suppose—and that was that. When I wanted him to be somewhere I called Ianthe to put it in his schedule, and walla, a boyfriend emerged. One that fucked decently and was clean and didn’t want me to treat him like I was his mommy. It was like a fairy tale. Only Prince Charming is a womanizing, sexist asshole. Like me, none of the Princesses ever loved their Prince Charming. They hardly knew the men. The guys were all beautiful and sexy and had a savior complex, sure, but passion is not love and love and in real life, love comes secondary to satisfaction. With Tamlin I’m satisfied. Being with him is easy. So easy, in fact, that I was more than sure I could be with him for the rest of my life. 

I punched the button that opened the window and let the cool, winter country air whip the hair against my face. It was clean, crisp. Without smog or exhaust fumes or the funny way a city can smell like steel and concrete.

As a kid, I’d always been surrounded by nature. After my father had lost his fortune in a bad stock trade, after my mother had died from Tuberculosis, nature was all I had. It was the great big escape from my controlling older sister and my demanding younger sister. The small woodsy area in our tiny, two bedroom apartment was the only way to stay sane—then college had allowed me to go to New York and somehow, as the years flew by, nature became Central Park with its hobos and drug addicts and carefully cultivated beauty.

This though—this was nature. And I’d missed it.

“Jesus, fucking roll up the window. It’s freezing.” Tamlin, of course, did not make the effort to roll up the window himself, though he had the same controls in the passenger door.

The place we were going to for the swingers-get-away was a little collection of cabins outside of a state park. Tamlin had emailed me the link for the website: it was a quaint looking set of cabins nestled between trees on a hill. Each cabin was outfitted with a traditional stove—for heat—a bed, a connected bathroom, and a fan—for the heat. It was supposed to be rustic, the kind of retreat from society where you glamped away from wifi and the stresses of modern life. In reality, it was a collection of cabins centered around a “main house”—which served three meals a day, rental equipment for bike riding and kayaking and skiing, and wifi—as a pit stop between the road and the state park. Apparently, it was popular in the fall, summer and spring, so popular that you had to pick a reservation months in advance. In the winter, though, it was deserted and rich, horny people can rent the entire place out for a ridiculous fee. Breakfast was served from seven to nine, lunch from twenty to two, and dinner from five to seven. Rental equipment prices were extra and non-negotiable. And there was absolutely no sex allowed in the “main house”.

Tamlin and I were renting Cabin Number 7. The entire week was costing him 500 dollars, gas included. 

“Hey, turn here.”

“I know.”

“Well then, turn.”

I turned into a long, lone dirt road that went on for miles. We got further and further up the tree-dotted mountains till tEscaladeade was directed—by a wooden sign—that we were at Velaris. “Weird name,” Tamlin said, pointing over to the other cars parked in a tiny dirt lot. As soon as I parked the Escalade I got out, stretching my legs and taking in a deep breath of nature-air.

“Hey, come help me with the bags.” Tamlin called, going towards the back.

“No, I’m going to sign in.”

“Help me—”

“Use those big muscles that you pay to maintain,” I called, walking away. I could hear him muttering as I walked towards the Main House. It was a huge building. I’m pretty sure people would call it a ranch-style house, but I wasn’t sure if a ranch style had the massive front porch or the second floor. Whatever kind of architecture it was, it was big and sprawling, the kind of house no one in their reasonable mind would ever buy from a single family. Made of wood and stone, I walked up the porch steps and through the double front door. Inside, there was still that fresh, crisp scent of nature everywhere, only mingled with expressive perfume and cologne.

I ignored the main floor—though I could see warm colors and faded furniture along with all the people—for the office just off to the side of the entrance. I knocked on the glass part of the door to get the attention of the man inside. He was leaning over the desk, typing away at a Mac Book desktop monitor.

He was… different from what I expected. Not that I knew what I really expected—but there was a stereotype to adhere to: beard, flannel, laugh lines around a tanned face. I had this whole interaction in my head where I’d get called Hun and the man would tell me about his wife and how the kids had all moved away but the grandkids came by every summer and helped out. He’d talk a lot about something benign and naturally—like fly fishing. Something along those lines.

Instead, sitting behind the desk, was a gangster. The kind I’d expect on street corners who’d spit out a balloon if you gave them thirty bucks. The only thing even close to my mental image was the beard.

I didn’t recognize him until he looked up. It was the eyes: he’d grown, but his eyes had stayed the same. I use to call them flower eyes, because they had such a strange mix of purple and blue, a kind of rich color that you only see on flower petals.

He looked up at me with them for a second before dismissing me with a, “I’ll be right with you.” I watched as he clicked away at his desktop and stayed where I was, not moving to sit in the chairs in front of the desk, though they were comfortable looking velvet with wings. A woman’s shawl was draped across the top of the right chair. The kind of chair you curl up into to feel the sun on your face. Instead of going towards them, I leaned against the doorjamb, half in, half out, listening to the people in the lounge and feeling the draft from the double doors as I watched him.

I tried very hard to forget my childhood. It used to be that I went to a therapist for my shit—but I was long past that now. It was all so distant, so faded, a memory of a memory of a realization that there was a reason to me, to my habits and my ways. It almost felt like a story I’d told myself: A long, long time ago, there was a tormented and awkward girl. Her mother died young, her father lost all his money and then lost his will to live. Her oldest sister blamed the girl for not having a better paying job, though the older sister didn’t try to get a job herself. The younger sister demanded and demanded and demanded, so sweet in her innocence and purity and laziness. And the little girl, she was bullied. She listened to music to drown out the voices of others and kept her eyes down on her feet, trying to gain control of her life by never eating. She grew up, saving enough money to tie her tubes. She started to paint her feeling out, getting it all out into the world with color and texture and balance, and eventually, she got good enough at it that she could buy her own studio in New York, renting out the space five months out of the week for classes to make ends meet. Life became simple and easy and the more painting she made, the more the pounds filled out her frame. And one day, that shy, angry, skinny girl died. A sad, tragic story with a happy ending. It was all so far behind me.

So far, so buried down deep, that I’d forgotten those eyes until I saw them again. Big, vibrant eyes. Ones that didn’t try to hide their heaviness, their sadness, their pain. Eyes that looked at the world with honest sincerity.

I can’t remember his name. I can’t remember anything significant about him. But I can remember his eyes. I can remember how, one day, when I was late getting out of school and he was walking out of the principal’s office, he’d walked up to me. He’d grabbed my face in his massive hands and said it was going to be better, one day. That one day, it would all seem like a passing memory. His sincere eyes had told me he wasn’t talking to me, not really. He was talking to himself. And then he’d walked away. I never saw him again after that—he’d been expelled that day for one too many disruptive incidents in class.

It was odd… to see him again. To remember him.

He was a big guy—not physically. No, he was big in presence, in personality. He’d make Tamlin, who was 6’2 and 240 pounds of pure muscle, look small by association. This gangster was too unique to fit the “perfect” mold. He looked sensual, yes, but he was too intimidating, too intense to be _beautiful_. Next to Tamlin… well, Tamlin would look like a damn Ken doll, all plastic and perfect.

“Alright,” The man finally looked up from his monitor. His eyes were just like I remember them being. He didn’t hide anything from them—not his boredom, his annoyance, or the appreciative way he looked me over. “What can I do for you?”

He didn’t recognize me, that was obvious. And why would he? Nothing about me was the same. Still, I was excited by the idea. Of his look, of my own disappointment that he didn’t know me. “I’m here to check into Cabin 7.” I had to clear my voice twice to say the words, clearing whatever clogged the back of my throat as I’d watched him.

He nodded. “ID and card, then.” He turned back to his computer and clicked away. After three clicks—when I hadn’t moved—he looked up again, “Mrs Spring.”

“I’m not—I’m Archeon. Feyre Archeon.” I said. I waited. Excited, scared, disappointed all over again by his lack of recognition. I usually never corrected people when they called me Mrs. Spring. After all, I’d be Mrs. Spring whenever I got around to letting Ianthe plan the actual wedding—a year or two, maybe more. But I corrected him now. When he didn’t recognize me, I had to look away. I looked awkwardly over my shoulder, to the people milling about inside the large, open area filled with couches and a fireplace and a fully stocked bar.

For the first time, I felt nervous about agreeing to all this. A week long sexual retreat? I wasn’t a swinger. I wasn’t poly. I did casual sex, sure, but monogamy was important to my foundational being. It made me feel secure, dating one person and one person only. I’d always wanted to be the kind of girl that said ‘no’ to the double standard of sexuality, the kind that stood up against slut shaming by being proud and free and open with themselves and the idea of commitment. I’d always wanted to not care about societal standards, too. Sex was great, the sensation was great—why not enjoy it with different people? Because everyone gave a different feeling, a different sensation. But… it just wasn’t me.

I was the anorexic, awkward, shy girl who just wanted one person—one person—to love. It was okay if they didn’t feel the same, it was okay if they didn’t want to be with me or couldn’t love me… because I didn’t need them to. My emotions for them were enough, and if they wanted, I’d show them all the love and care and kindness I could possibly give them. And that had always been enough for me. Tamlin was enough for me.

This though? This was not me.

“Alright, Feyre Archeon.” The man said, taking me back to his intense gaze. “I need your ID and card. Says the cabin is rented under a…” He looked at his monitor. “Tamlin Spring. I’ll need his ID, too.”

“Sure, yeah.” With one last look at the lounge, I stepped forward into the office. I had pockets in my paint-covered overalls so I didn’t have my purse on me. Reaching deep, I pulled out my wallet and gave him my ID and credit card. “Who are you?” I asked, holding it up into the air between us. He reached forward very slowly, as if I’d scare. His hand was lean fingered and square-palmed, which pinched the card between knuckle and thumb. I wondered what they’d feel like against my cheeks. I couldn’t remember what it had felt like, the first and only time he’d touched me.

“I own the place, names Rhysand.”

“Rhysand, hu?” Rhysand, Rhysand… it rang no bells. I looked him over, trying to shove his name onto him like a title of description. Rhysand. Rhysand had a beard that was well trimmed. Rhysand had think, dark eyebrows that were truly impressive and probably have the reason why he looked perpetually scowling. Rhysand had the clear, tan skin of a man who spent long hours outside. Rhysand had the creep of tattoos under his shirt collar. Rhysand had scars on his knuckles. Rhysand. Rhysand.

It was so unique of a name… I’d never met another Rhysand before.

 “So…  how bad is business if you have to rent to a bunch of swingers?” I asked, wanting to hear his voice again, if only to call it Rhysand’s voice.

He looked up briefly from his computer, giving me a glance over again. I felt self-conscious in my cropped Nasa hoodie and baggy overalls. The toe of my right shoe was tapping against the floor nervously. I looked formless, shapeless. He couldn’t see me underneath the clothes. What would he think? I wasn’t thick, I’d never be curvy. My thighs were too thin and my hips were narrow. Would he hate that? If he saw me, under my clothes, would he recognize me for who I used to be?

“Who says I don’t rent to you guys regularly?” He asked, arching one impressive eyebrow. “You’re some of my best business.”

I smiled, still tapping my foot. “Glad to hear it. It’s hard to pass up wild sex in the wilderness.” He nodded, going back to his computer. “So, who’s the craziest people you’ve ever rented to?”

His wide lips cracked a smile. “Sex wise?”

“Anyone.” I grabbed the back of a wing-backed chair, feeling the soft fabric of the shawl draped casually on top of it. It was multiple shades of blue with interesting geometric patterns that might have been rose buds, might have been nothing at all. It had long, dark blue strings leading down the bottom. I wished I could smell it without being weird.

“Off the top of my head? I don’t know. Probably this elderly couple. They make the list, at least. The old woman, she sleep walked, right? She and her husband were here for two weeks, staying outside the park to save up some money. Well, she comes walking into the Main House one night and just starts eating. Didn’t touch the fridge but she chewed a chunk out of the couch and ate half a bouquet of flowers before I came downstairs trying to figure out what all the noise was. Her eyes were open—it was the damnedest thing.”

“Living like that would be odd.” I pinched the fabric of the shawl, feeling it’s smooth silk.

“Like what? As a sleepwalker?”

“Yeah… I wonder if she knew she was sleeping when she did all that stuff. I wonder if, sometimes when she’s awake, she get deja-vu and wonder if she was still asleep.” I didn’t look away from the shawl, feeling his heavy gaze on me as I pinched and twisted.

“You make it sound fantastical.” I looked up at him then, meeting his chocolate gaze head on. “She was just some old lady who sleepwalked.”

“You have no imagination.”

“Sure I do.” He shrugged. “Just not about shit like that. People know when their awake and people know when their sleeping.”

I laughed. “So you’ve never experienced it?” I looked out the window, watching Tamlin struggling with the bags in the heavy snow. We’d both brought a suitcase, and he was having a hard time juggling them both while walking through the icy path to the porch, his laptop case under one arm and his phone pressed up to his cheek. He looked strange, out there, like a man who defeated the purpose of the snow and the mountains and the trees. “They say you never realize you're happy until after the fact—because when you're happy the moment is lived in. You're totally in the present. But sometimes, when I’m happy, I recognize it, and I know that it nothing will feel as good as I do right then. Only when I look back on it, it’s so faded and shallow… all I remember is the recognition of that happiness, a shallow image that I swear looks familiar. It’s… dreamlike. Surreal.”

When he said nothing, I looked away from Tamlin and his awkward juggling and sliding, towards the mountain of the man sitting behind his desk, watching me with a gaze so heavy and dark and honest that it tore at my chest a little. “Sorry, I don’t usually babble so much.”

 He opened his mouth, then closed it. His eyes said he understood though. I smiled a little deeper. “I hope I make the Top 10 weirdest people you’ve rented to.” I teased.

“No, no you don’t.” He said.

I was about to answer when the front door opened and Tamlin came in with a gust of cold wind. I turned to watch him leave the dripping wet suitcases to walk into the office, blowing into his hands as if he didn’t have gloves on. His phone was back in his pocket. “This place is fucking cold. I can feel my balls receding into me.” He said, not looking up. “Frey, you need to—” And then he looked up.

I’d never in my life seen Tamlin Spring hesitate at the sight of another person before. He was fearless, a quality that I both admired and abhorred. His fearlessness made him confident, his confidence, being unearned, made him cocky and suffocating domineering. But sometimes, when I saw him interacting with other people, I couldn’t help but watch him look down at the world and… admire it. Being with him sometimes made me feel tall, too. Yet here he was, hesitating, looking cold and frazzled. I watched him shake it off, watched him steal himself as he quickly looked away from Rhysand and towards me. “I needed you to help me.” He hissed.

“With what? Looks like you got it all in.”

“Feyre.” He sneered.

“Mr. Spring.” We both turned sharply to look at Rhysand. He still sat calmly behind his desk, a blank mask on his face. “I need to sign you in. Can you give me your ID?”

“Sure, sure. Whatever.” He unbuttoned his big coat and flopped himself down into the opposite chair, lounging in his sexy way. He grabbed his wallet and tossed it onto the desk, not even having the curtesy to take his ID out. “God damn, how do you stand this weather?”

“You get used to it.” Rhysand said, voice clipped. He grabbed the wallet and took out the ID, going back to his computer to click away at things.

“No—no way. This is why I live in New York. It’s never this fucking cold in New York.”

“We’re in New York.” I reminded him.

“No, we’re in fucking snow country. This is not New York. This is hell frozen over.”

“So you define state lines by smog and cities and people?”

“Shut up, god, you’re such a know it all. Go get me a scotch from that open bar.” He reached down for his phone, thumbs dancing.

I’d been with him for a while now. We snapped at each other, we were cruel, insulting… but never before had it felt so—so wrong. Pathetic, almost. Without looking at Rhysand, I stomped out of the office towards the open bar. I ignored the people milling about, the couples and grounds talking to each other with crystal glasses of liquor in their hands as I made my way to the open bar. A woman was standing behind it, eating cherries the same color as her lipstick out of a small plastic tray. She looked gorgeous, tall and blond and full figured, her brown eyes lifting as I got closer. “You look like you need a drink.” She said, flippant.

“What gave me away?”

“That glare. Honey, you could snap someone’s neck with a glare like that.” She stood up fully, exposing her statuesque height and beauty as she popped another cherry into her mouth. “What’ll it be?”

“How about grounds for divorce?”

“Hmmm… I don’t have my encyclopedia of drinks handy for witty comebacks. What’s in it?”

I looked her over. She was the kind of girl who made friends with people easily, a fun, humorous, upfront personality. She stood with her hand on her cocked out hip, her gaze heavy-lidded and teasing. “Bourbon, Averna, vermouth, campari, and bitters.”

“Hu… I got… beer? And bourbon, oh, some gin.” She said this with her eyes to the wood paneled ceiling, counting her fingers. “Annnnddd… vodka. I make a mean vodka soda. I even got all the sodas.”

“Really?”

“What? It’s not like I’m a bartender.” She grinned, leaning back over the polished counter to grab another cherry. “Just working as one right now. Usually I just grab whatever’s handy and chug like there’s no tomorrow.”

“Fine, surprise me.” The woman nodded, slowly standing up to turn around and grab a vodka bottle. I turned, putting my elbow on the counter to watch a group sitting in one of the living room sets off to my left. Two men were sitting on a leather loveseat, facing a man sitting in a velvet recliner, a woman on his lap, her arms around his neck. The woman was maybe fifty or so years old, holding up physically, but her skin was a bit wrinkled around the neck and hands. The man she was on, though, was younger than me, talking expressively with the one hand not pressed up to her thigh. The two men across from him had their backs to me, but I watched as one leaned over to kiss the other’s neck.

I looked around. A man with what looked like a vodka soda in his hand was talking—loudly—about getting the two women up to his cabin. The two women—a blond and brunette—looked about two seconds away from making out on the spot, their hands all over each other. Near them, a woman adjusting one of her breasts in… was that a corset?

“Jesus.” I turned back to the bar. “I can’t do this.”

“What? No one attractive enough for you?” She asked, handing me over a green glass. “I mixed vodka up with this green stuff we had called midori. Hope it’s good.”

“Got any OJ?”

“Ahhh… I have orange Fanta?”

“All the sodas, hu?” I said, smirking. I grabbed the drink and took a large sip of the melon ball. “I’m good without the orange soda, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” She shrugged, grabbing another cherry. “So… what’s wrong?”

“What?” I asked, confused.

“Come on, talk to me. I’ve always wanted to be one of those bar-keeps whose like, a therapist for the lonely drunkards. I even have a rag, see?” She reached under the counter and pulled up a clean white hand towel. “I’ll like, repeatedly clean a clean glass while you talk. It’ll be fun.” She grabbed a glass and did just that. “Tell me your problems, young padiwan.”

“I think you’re mixing your references up there, lady.” I drank another sip, letting the alcohol warm me. “I just—don’t know how I got dragged into all this. How I agreed to be here.”

“Ah… a dilemma for the ages. Yes. Yes.” She nodded. “Why are we all here? Why are we born? How are you, you? Very good questions. Very nice.”

I glanced sideways at her. Her existential rambling was pretty cute, actually. Any other time and I’d be more than willing to go down the rabbit hole with her. “What?”

“Okay—I told you. I’m not a barkeep.” She shrugged, then threw up the towel dramatically in the air and put the clean glass down. “I mean, fuck, why are you here? Aren’t most people who come to these sorts of things pretty set on getting down and dirty with some strangers?”

“My fiancé wanted to come.”

“Shit—why?”

“So he could get down and dirty with some strangers.” I drank another huge gulp.

“Fuck. Leave his ass. You’re too damn fine to be with someone like that.”

“Polyamory is a real thing, you know.” I said, pointing to her with my glass in hand. “Plenty of people are into the idea of seeing whoever they want while in a committed relationship.”

“Sure, sure. Yes. I’m all about that minority representation. Poly people are cool. Love for everybody, be safe, use condoms—all that jazz. I got a good friend, Amren, with a stable boyfriend. She still dates and fucks other people though. They have this long-distance relationship—he’s really attached to his boss—but they make it work and they seem to like it just fine. I’m totally down for it. It’s great. But they're all totally cool with it. Her boyfriend doesn’t feel left out or look around him and realize he doesn’t want to be there.” She gave me a pointed look. Then she took the glass and started to refill it. I hadn’t even realized it was empty till it was in her hand

“Fuck off.” I mumbled, watching him pour way too much midori into the glass. “Only bar keeps can talk to me this way.”

She snorted. “Well well, you do have boundaries.” She put the glass on the counter and slid it over.

I opened my mouth to yell at her when Tamlin, magically, popped up at my side. He threw his gloves onto the counter, sneering.

“Scotch on the rocks. Dalmore, if you’ve got it.”

“Excuse you, too.” I looked to the woman, seeing a very not-impressed look on her face as she eyed Tamlin up and down.

“That guy is a fucking prick.” Tamlin hissed, looking around the room, taking in the people. “I’m totally leaving a bad yelp review.”

“You do that.” I muttered, taking a drink. It really did have way too much midori in it. “So, we good to check in?”

“What? Yeah. I got the key.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a little key on a big wooden card with the letter 7 burned into both sides. “We’re good to go. Only…” His eyes trailed the room, obviously looking for someone.

I wondered if he was here to meet someone. After all—why this place? It was hundreds of miles away and I was sure there was some kind of club or retreat closer to home. Why somewhere in the middle of the Upstate New York? I’d never questioned it before, mostly because I hadn’t wanted to think about it. I had my answer the second his eyes stopped roaming and his lips parted in a sigh. I watched his face for a second, taking in the way his chiseled features softened, the way his green eyes seemed to glow on their own.

I followed his gaze then to a woman sitting in a chair. She was talking to two other women, and god, was she beautiful. She seemed a bit like a queen, her spine straight, her collar bones delicate, her entire posture refined and womanly. Her full lips were painted a dark shade of purple that offset her warm brown skin and her hair was full and thick and curled around her head. Her entire face lifted as she smiled at whatever the woman across from her said. “I see,” I said, watching her. “She’s what you’re here for.”

“Her name’s Jesminda.” Tamlin said. “Let’s go say hi.” He walked forward, leaving his gloves on the counter, his glass of scotch untouched. I watched him walk up to her, feeling like an unwanted observer as she rose to greet him. Her elegant, thin arms wrapped around his shoulders, fingers tangling together, as she smiled at him. Her back curved just right to show off all her lean curves. His shoulders looked broad compared to her, his looks a golden echo of her warmth.

“Doesn’t look like the face of a poly woman to me.” The barkeep said behind me.

I looked at her, ready to rip into her, but there was something soft about her face when our eyes met. A kindness that, all at once, made me want to cry. “What’s your name?” I asked.

She smiled faintly, looking sad. “Morrigan.”

“Well, Morrigan. It was nice meeting you.”

“Sure, sure.”

I walked away from her. Jesminda looked over at me first, as I got closer. How could anyone’s neck be that thin and not look bad? And her jaw was so square. She looked me over as if confused by me, which drew Tamlin’s attention. “Ah, there you are. Jesminda, meet Feyre. Feyre, Jesminda.” He opened up his stance, so Jesminda’s hands separated from around his neck and they stood side by side, arm in arm.

“Hello, so nice to finally meet you.” Jesminda had to reach over with her left hand, since her right was resting on Tamlin’s shoulder. The diamond on her wedding ring flashed in the light, matching the white of her French tips. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

 _And I’ve smelled you_. All the times Tamlin came home with Rubies and Diamonds perfume… I’d always assumed he was a womanizer—the kind of man who fucked every woman available to him. But it was just one. Just Jesminda.

It was so… odd. I sat where I was directed by the gentle sweep of one hand, sitting where the two women—who’d gotten up to leave—had sat before me, watching Tamlin and Jeminda from across the coffee table. I don’t know how I was supposed to feel about all this. I don’t know how I actually felt, but something tight was balling itself up in my chest.

I’d always considered myself a post-modern woman. My parents’ marriage was a disaster of chaos and drugs and violence and emotional distance. They’d married out of love and were too jealous and tied up in each other’s financial security to divorce each other before my mother died of TB. I’d always thought: I’ll never marry for love. Not ever. Because if you didn’t love them, you couldn’t hate them, either. And I’d seen Tamlin that one morning, buying his stupid kale smoothie… I’d thought now here’s the kind of man I could marry. A vain man, a man I could stare at forever, a man who would never let me in. And we’d fucked and we’d dated and we’d gone through the motions. He proposed by flinging a ring at me one day, not even boxing it up, and telling me his parents weren’t invited. We were in it for the long haul. So I didn’t have to be single, and he didn’t have to be single, and sometime in our old, withering years… we’d have somebody. Somebody other than our failing selves.

After all, what was a marriage? Just a construct. A documentation for lineage and descent of property and money. It was all about children, really, children I’d never have, shrouded around the symbolism of religion and legality. But somewhere along the lines of economic contracts, Ozzie and Harriet decided to fuck it all up. They created some dyeing lifestyle that had never really existed in the first place. A man builds the future from the world in, a woman builds the future from the house out. A woman’s acceptable place in society was cemented in: womanhood was only right under the terms of wife and mother. And people really started to believe that. Suddenly being single became the worst thing a woman could be. Single is sad, it’s pathetic. A single mom is a bad mom. A single divorcee is to be pitied. A single widow should mourn and move on, start putting themselves out there again. And if you were just plain single… well, here’s a Tinder account, here’s some vibrators, here’s some terrible rom-com where women get furious and drunk and pathetic because they don’t have someone to love them. Here’s to friends pushing blind dates on you and mothers who always ask about grandchildren. Here’s to saying ‘she’s a career woman’ as if that explanation was a lament all on its own, not an identity.

I was marrying Tamlin because I’d never love him. I was sick and tired of that invisible scorn, that heavy expectation. And I was so sick of loving people who couldn’t love me back. So I’d stick with the secure thing, the bland, satisfying thing. A loveless marriage.

I’d never expected him to be in love with someone else though.

“So, Feyre.” Jesminda said, smiling beautifully. “What do you do?”

“I—don’t really do much, actually. I paint and I own a studio.”

“She mostly spends her time with paint on her face.” Tamlin said, glancing at me.

“What about you?” I asked.

“Me? Oh, this and that. I work for a few community projects, some charity events, but I’m mostly a full time mom. My oldest is ten, my youngest is four.” She smiled beautifully at me, features softening in maternal love. “It’s a lot of work.”

“I can only imagine.” I said, nodding.

“When do you think you and Tamlin here will be getting pregnant?” Jesminda asked, reaching over to stroke Tamlin’s arm as she gazed into his eyes. “I’m curious to see what a little Tamlin Jr would look like, running around and trying to dominate the world.”

Tamlin laughed. “I already have a kid, thank you. One with an amazing mother.” He kissed the back of her hand, her left one.

“You—you two have a kid together?”

“Oh, yes. My youngest, Lia.” Jesminda said, turning to look at me. “We had a paternity test, just to make sure.”

I must be drunk because all I could say was, “And you don’t spend time with your kid?” It was a demand, a scornful sneer directed at Tamlin.

“I visit her all time.” Tamlin said, hissing right back. “But Jesminda and Lucien and I all agreed that he was a better father figure and we didn’t want to separate Lia from her siblings—so I’m just her second dad. Maybe when she’s older…” He shook his head.

That made sense. It seemed right, thought out, logical. “I…”

“What’s gotten into you?” Tamlin asked, shaking his head. “Go to the cabin, lay down. You’re obviously too drunk to—”

“Tamlin,” Jesminda said softly. “Stop it.” She turned to me. “Honey, would you like me to get you some coffee?” And she leaned forward, putting one of her hands on my knee. She had nice hands. And her skin was warm and poreless, absorbing all the soft, muted tones of the cabin. She smelled like Rubies and Diamonds. When I didn’t answer, she stood. “I’ll go get you some coffee, sweetheart.” And she walked away.

“Don’t be like this.” Tamlin hissed, when Jesminda was out of earshot. “You’re making such a bad impression right now.”

“Oh, boo hoo.” I said. I put my head in my hands, feeling my fingers drag through my hair as I pushed back.

“Feyre. Feyre.” He leaned forward too, grabbing my knees in a steady grip. “Seriously, Freya. Listen to me. She’s important. One of the most important people in my life. Her and Lucien are like family—fuck, their more important than any family I’ve ever had. I want you to get along with them.”

“Lucien is… here?” Did Tamlin and Lucien have sex? Was Tamlin even bisexual? Why did I know if he was into guys or not?

“He’ll be here in a few days. He was delayed.” Tamlin’s lips thinned. “Jesminda is understanding but don’t—fuck—this—up.” Or else was written all over his face. If they didn’t like me, I was out. Dumped.

“If they’re so important to you, why is this the first time I’m hearing about them?” I asked, eyes narrowed.

“And tell you what? I knew I had to get you to meet them before I told you about them. You’re such a judgmental bitch, you’d just scoff at it all unless you saw. Unless you really saw.” He moved away, pushing against my knees as he leaned back into his own chair, flinging his arms out to take up room, position. “That and you never asked. Not once.” He looked away, probably back towards Jesminda. “You’re just in this with me for the title, I know that, but you’re going to have to step up.”

And that hurt. That’s what was balling up in my chest, getting tighter and tighter as tears filled my vison. This was hurt. A man I didn’t care about had hurt me. Because I didn’t care. Because, by not caring, I’d made him unreal. A two-dimensional placeholder I scoff at. My laughter was strange and broken in my ears, soft enough that only Tamlin heard it.

Jesminda came back quickly. She put a warm had on my shoulder and passed over a steaming mug, saying, “Here you go, sweetheart, it’s still hot.” And when she noticed my tears, she sighed. “Oh, darling.” And it was all mother that sat on the arm of the couch I was on, leaning over and hugging me as she rubbed my back. “It’s hard, I know it’s a lot to process, shhh—shhh.”

“I’m—I’m okay, really.” I said, giving her a watery smile.

“No, you’re not. But it’s okay to not be okay.” She leaned away though, keeping a hand on my upper back for support as she sat there on the armrest. “Tamlin mentioned how, how you didn’t know much about our lifestyle. I get how it can be confusing at times, I really do. But I’m here, if you have any questions.” Please have questions seemed to be written on her face.

I looked to her, then to Tamlin. One was open and waiting, the other demanding. I nodded. “How… how does it work for you? How are you okay with…” I trailed off.

“Well, it’s easy for me, really. I’ve never been one to believe that once I’ve met someone, their the only person I can have sex with. I didn’t want to be limited like that, and I didn’t like the idea of cheating. And it’s gratifying, and empowering, and humbling to know that someone is with you, not because of obligation, but because they chose to be there—even though they have other options, have seeked them out. That way, I know that my husband is with me because he truly loves me, and Tamlin is with me because he truly loves us.” Ah—so Tamlin was bisexual. Someone, that was the thing that broke me, that was the thing that had my head spinning in a million directions. I didn’t even know that the man I was going to spend my life with was bisexual. It shouldn’t matter, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter, but… it wasn’t like learning that your lover liked milk with his coffee.

“Yeah, okay. I just… need a second, okay?” I stood up.

“Of course.” She nodded, not an ounce of disappointment in her.

“I… I’m going to get some fresh air.” I said, walking away. “I’ll… be right back.” I left without looking at them, knowing I was running away but needing to anyway. I moved past the empty front desk area and out into the front porch. I sat in a wicker chair, grabbing a blanket tossed across it’s back and wrapping it around my frame before hugging the mug to me.

For a while, I just watched the snow fall. Silent little wisps of white that built up on each other, forming an untouched blanket over the ground. It was beautiful—and daunting. Almost like it was a challenge to keep that perfect white blanket pristine and unmuddied by the ground or the people of the world. As if it was saying: how long can you keep something pure?

I should be better than this, I knew that. Thirty years old and I was still selfish and cruel. Still lashing out like a child would. When would I reach wisdom, I wondered. When would I get harmony? Be the kind of person I’d always wanted to be, a smart, funny, well rounded, helpful, considerate, and kind woman who knew who she was. I needed to reach perfection. And soon, or it would all fall apart in my hands. I’d be single again, and there would be no way to hide my bad behavior anymore.

It was a relief when I felt the big presence next to me. I sipped the edge of my now cold coffee before looking up at Rhysand. “Hi.”

“Hello.” He said, nodding. He was bundled up in a big coat and a scarf, a hat on his head, steam rising from his lips. I watched him grab a cigarette pack from his pocket and light it. “You feeling any better?”

“What?”

“You’re eyes—they're still red.” He said, jerking his chin down at me as he took in a deep inhale. “You doing any better?”

“You ever…” I laughed. “You ever realize you’re not who you want to be?”

“Sure.” He said, taking in another inhale. “Yeah, all the time.”

“How do you deal with it?”

“I pretend, mostly.” He said. He sighed, then sat in the chair next to mine, the wicker creaking dangerously under all his bulk. “Play out the kind of actions of the man I want to be.”

“But that doesn’t mean you’re actually who you want to be.”

“True, but who can tell?” He shrugged, looking over at me briefly, showing his wonderful purple-blue eyes. “See, I wasn’t a good person, when I was younger. I was all anger and shit. Fuck this, fuck that. You know—everything was the world’s fault. It was fucked up, dangerous, unkind, and I was fucked up because the world had chewed me up and spit me out without even thinking twice about me. In prison, fuck, I was lonely and scared enough to get a shock to the system. Suddenly the world seemed nice. I wanted to be back in it, away from all the fuckers who blamed the world for their problems. When I finally did get out—I decided I was going to be better. Only, I was still me. So instead of beating myself up, I decided I was going to accept it and change something.

“Living in Boston was bad for me, I knew that. I had to get away from all the old haunts, the old friends. ‘Cus it’s a small world when you live in a big city. So I packed up all my shit and I decided to come across country. Kept driving and driving, looking for something I wasn’t sure I was ever going to find. Then I came upon these cabins and the old man who owned them needed a handyman and… I just never left. Fixing things, it helped.” He took another deep breath.

“Can I get one of those?”

“Got a quarter?”

“Cheap ass.” I said, smiling. “Charge my card.”

“Don’t think I won’t,” He teased, reaching into his pocket. He handed me the pack and a lighter. It had been so long since I’d smoked a cigarette that the burn scorched the back of my throat.

“So you own the place now?”

“Yeah, the old man decided that he wanted to live closer to family after his daughter died. He let me buy the place for cheap if I gave him a promise.”

“Which was?”

“To let him see his grandkids every so often.” Confused, I asked him what he meant. “I mean, I got his dead daughter pregnant. Got two beautiful kids running around out there in the snow, building some gigantic lopsided snowman.”

I took in a deep drag. Rhysand had children, he was a father. That was another thing to file under his name. “Do you ever regret them?”

“What?”

“I mean, do you ever regret having them? You ever look at them and realize their half of you and just… despair? Because you're reminded of your own childhood and your own parents and the stories that they told you of their childhood and realize… you’re perpetuating a cycle of fucked up?”

“Damn, darling, you must have had some childhood.” He sighed, stabbing out the butt of his cigarette with his foot. “No, I’ve never once looked at my kids like that. Used to be, when Melinda was pregnant, that I’d obsess over being a good father. Doing the right things, teaching them about the world, but fuck, the second they were able to walk and talk on their own I realized they learn without you. They’ll come at me sometimes with some profound shit and I’ll be stuck there, realizing that they see and think a lot more than I give them credit for. More than I give myself credit for. All I do, really, is help them out along the way. Show them how to look at someone else’s perspective. Show them how to clean and eat and treat another person. The rest is all them.” He shrugged. “And how could they possibly know about my fucked up childhood unless I show them? And why would I ever want to?”

My cigarette was gone. My coffee was cold. I looked over at me, watching how his body leaned forward so his elbows were on his knees. Rhysand, a good father.

“Tell me, do you recognize me?” I asked.

He frowned as he looked at me. “Should I?”

“No, not really. I just… I remember you.”

He frowned harder. “Listen, whatever I did—I’m sorry. I was fucked at the time and I—” He stopped talking as I shook my head.

“No. Nothing like that. We were in high school together. Saint Augustine’s, you remember?” He nodded, his eyebrows squishing together. “That day you got expelled, I was there, at my locker. And you came up to me and you grabbed my face and told me life would get better.”

His eyebrows had separated, his eyes had widened. “Shit, you’re—” He cut himself off.

“Freaky Freya, yeah.” I laughed.

“You, ah,” He licked his lips. “Grew up.”

“I did, thankfully.” I grabbed his pack again, lighting another cigarette. “I guess I just want to let you know how much that meant to me at the time. It got me through the next two years.”

He nodded, looking back at the snow. “I remember you now. Yeah. We had the same class together—god, what was it? Some math class. The teacher was a total cunt. She made you stand up front one day and do this ridiculous problem set and you just finished it like it was nothing. You’re face got so red when you turned around and realized everyone was looking at you and you tried to get back to your seat and smashed into someone's desk and knocked it over.”

I sighed. “Shit, I’d forgotten about that.” The shame and humiliation wasn’t dulled by the years, not at all.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “I remember you. You were a sweet kid. Once, someone was bullying you and you said something like ‘yeah, try and do it, all I gotta do is smash your face in and your down for the count’.” His laugh was deep, built up from the gut. “You were a brave kid.”

“I didn’t feel brave.”

“But you acted it—like I said, who's to know?” He smiled, grabbing his pack and lighting his own second cigarette.

“True, you remember when you told the principal to suck a dick?”

“Fuck yes I do. He was trying to tell me I’d tied my tie wrong. I’d worked really hard on that tie.”

“And then you threw smoke bombs in the girl’s bathroom.”

“And I pantsed that Officer who was always around school, made him chase me around all across campus.”

“Or that time you were caught smoking weed in the greenhouse?”

“No, I wasn’t caught smoking it. They found the pot plant I was trying to grow there.”

“No!”

“Yeah,” He smiled. “It wasn’t growing right in my backyard so…” He chuckled. “Fuck, I was a dipshit.”

“You were—” I cut myself off as the door opened and Tamlin walked out, Jasminda tucked under his arm.

“Oh, there you are.” He said, frowning. “Are you smoking again? I thought you quit.”

“Obviously not.” Rhysand answered, his voice all at once cold.

“Yeah, sure.” Tamlin sighed. “Jasminda and I are going to check out the cabin. We’ll… meet you soon, I guess.”

“Stay warm!” Jasminda said, smiling encouragingly. She was helping carry one of the suitcases, Tamlin’s laptop case under her arm.

“Yeah, you too.”

Rhysand and I both watched them walk off to the right, talking as gentle puffs of vapor left their mouths and they disappeared into the trees and snow. In their wake, the blanket of white was ruined, two jagged trails running through it like scars. “So… why are you with him?”

“I’m realizing that that is a very complicated question.”

“I’m sure I can keep up.”

I sighed. “Because I don’t want to be alone. I think…I think that about sums it up. I’m terrified of being alone. And sick of it, too. Since I was a kid I’ve always been alone. And I thought, as long as I can love someone, the world will be better. As long as I can cherish them and give them everything I can, I’ll mean something. To someone. But I don’t know if it’s the guys I pick or if it’s me—but my love is never returned. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. The love I give is mostly for me, anyway. And I’ll always love them, even if…” I trailed off, frowning into the snow. The cold was biting at me, making me feel cold from deep within my bones. As if my flesh wasn’t a part of me anymore, just this numb casing. Distant. Strange.

What the hell was I even talking about? I didn't love Tamlin. That was the entire reason why I was with him.

“So, you’re with him because you don’t think he’ll ever leave you?”

“That’s what I thought, yeah. But I’m pretty sure if I don’t make an effort to get along with Jasminda and his family… the one he made with her, her husband and her children and his child… I think he’ll leave.”

“And do you want to? Do you feel comfortable sharing him with his other lovers?”

“I… he was never mine to begin with.” And I knew that. I did.

“Hu.” Rhysand scratched at his chin. “So you have absolutely no self-esteem.”

“What?” The sound came out as a croak, and I looked over at him. His gaze, as always, was intense and unwaveringly honest.

“You heard me."

“You're—you're so fucking mean.”

“I’m honest, is what I am.” I watched him stand up, towering over me as if I was nothing but a child. “And I liked Freaky Freya better. At least she had some guts.”


	2. The Feeling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit is it hard recreating that angry, depressed, ranty writing style

 

It was odd, being in a place in life and not knowing how you got there. Looking back, it was clear the steps I took. The past was this massive, open path that wound and wound from oblivion to a cabin door. The future was nothing—a void. A place of darkness that can only be filled up by the continuing path and the imagination.

Right now I was imaging entwined bodies. A head tilted back to moan. A hand sliding up a thigh. Spread legs. Hips rutting into hips. What I heard, though, was just moans. A little bit of groans. The squeaking of a mattress with too much weight and movement on it. With so much sound, it was hard to picture three people. What did a threesome even look like?

Porn told one story but porn was about as realistic as commercials aimed at women. A face cannot be washed of makeup by the slow-motion, artistic slap of water to the face. Washing your face doesn’t reveal yet another layer of makeup as some beautiful, photoshopped person holds a towel to their cheek. Women don’t use razors on legs that have already been waxed of hair. Yet it's beautiful and it convinces a woman they need it. They need the makeup, they need the wash to take off the makeup, they need the shaved legs and the razors that could do that. In the end, maybe, hopefully, you’ll look like those women in the commercials. The beautiful faces and the disembodied legs and breasts and eyes. Maybe, one day, if you pay enough money and put enough effort in, you too can look unreal.

Porn was the cosmetic industry for men. Dicks are larger than life. Balls are meticulously clean and round, without a wrinkle in sight. Guys can go on for hours and hours. Women will let you do such wonderful, filthy things and look fantastic doing it. And if you can’t find a woman who looks like that when she’s getting ass fucked and three dicks are fighting for dominance in her mouth? Well—here's a male enhancement pill. Try that.

In a lot of ways, porn industry and the cosmetic industry are the same beast. An extension of each other made to reduce the human condition into something fantastical and obtainable by a certain select number of individuals. Made by the same people who advertise frat parties as sprawling lawns of good looking people screaming "chug". Or the ones that depict single life in your thirties to be filled with a perfectly balanced career, dating life, and friendship from your twenties that'll last till your eighty. It's the American dream, packaged in hard-to-open plastic so it can't be stolen without being bought. Nevermind the salesman trying to make a living off his own hard work. The cubicle and the life outside is the new unobtainable. The cure for it all comes with the worm at the bottom of the bottle, swollen and deformed. 

Either way, the past looms like this huge, massive thing, twisting and turning... and I have no idea what a threesome looks like. 

I could imagine, though. They were all beautiful, in their ways. Tamlin was like a golden tiger, all dashing, perfect features and golden hair and golden skin. A man made out of plastic to ogle and enjoy. Jesminda was lean and elegant and warm, the kind of beautiful that could pretend to splash water on its face. Lucien was shocking red hair and lean features and a full, judging gaze that seemed to smirk and say 'what, your dick isn't as big as mine'? All together they probably _would_ look like a porn scene. Cameras off to the side, the perfect lighting, the strange, distorted image of one body part here--another there. 

I just didn’t want to actually see it. My imagination was bad enough. Hearing it was bad enough.

How did I get here?

I turned so the door to Cabin number 7 was behind me. My own footsteps leading to the door stood out in the deep snow, mocking me, telling me _exactly_ how I got here. With my own two feet. My own will. And the mountains loomed on above it all, reminding me that there are important things in life.

Behind me, the moans got louder, the squeezing mattress more rabid. It was coming to a climax.

I walked away before I could hear it end. Followed my trail back to the main house. I had been standing out in the cold in front of the door so long that everyone had left to go hook up in their own cabins. The main hall was empty, dark. I reached for the door to jiggle it out but it was locked. Probably to keep out sleeping women who consumed and consumed without ever knowing why. I gave up on finding an open window or an unlocked side door to take a seat on the massive front porch where I’d smoked with Rhys, wishing there was a blanket out here to keep away the cold air.

Lucien had come a day earlier than planned. He'd been delayed because Jesminda's mother couldn't come to take care of the children until yesterday. None of them practiced the rich upper-classman ritual of raising children through nannies so... Lucien had stayed. I wish he hadn't come. Hadn't shown up at the main house during breakfast silently, sneaking up behind me and Tamlin before commenting about Tamlin's carnivorous habits. It was my first impression of him, sitting there, staring at my plate, and then hearing his lofty, mocking voice tell Tamlin he should try a vegetable every now and then. I’d never once seen Tamlin look so happy, so excited. In a second he was up and they were hugging each other in the strange way men do, slapping each other on the back with their arms between them, fists to their hearts. And Jasminda got Lucien a plate--with vegetables next to the bacon--before sitting down to join. It was all so easy, so seamless between the three of them. Conversation flowed and had no stop, no dominating two people. Jesminda would say something, Tamlin would laugh, Lucien would comment, Tamlin would say something back, Jesminda would put in a tease, they’d all reminisce about some person or thing that happened while they knew each other.

That—that was the threesome of real people, in the real world. The connection of hearts and lives. What the bodies seemed a little redundant after such an open display of real affection.

I’d learned more about Tamlin after an hour of listening to him and Lucien and Jesminda talk then I had our entire relationship. Finally—finally—I knew why he hated his family so badly. Finally I knew why he was the way he was. How he knew Lucien and Jasminda.

Tamlin's father had been a tycoon who'd raised only boys. Tamlin was the youngest and least likely to inherit anything, the least likely to have any pressure put on him at all. He'd thought about joining the military after highschool, knowing he didn't need to follow in his father's footsteps. Then Lucien came around and the military idea slipped off into the sidelines as they fell into friendship and then brotherhood and then each other's beds. Lucien had to leave his abusive family--also filled with brothers--to get some ounce of peace away from the faggot jokes and then, as he met Jasminda and fell in love, the nigger jokes. Tamlin's life became the three of them, wrapped up in the kind of safety you can only manage when you make your own family. Tamlin's father hadn't liked it and he'd tried separating them--so Tamlin had left home early. Jasminda's mother and father became Tamlin and Lucien's mother and father, too. Their only parental connection as Tamlin was written out of the will and Lucien tried to avoid his father and brother's attention every chance he got. 

They really were a family. In every conceivable sense of the word.

And I didn’t fit into that. Not unless I changed a fundamental part of who I am as a person. Not unless I got more and more lost in a thing that wasn’t me. How had I ever convinced myself that Tamlin could fit this perfect idea of a Ken doll? How could I imagine he was dull and boring and insipid enough to be okay in a loveless relationship with me and just have random, inconsequential sex with other females? He was a person. A person needs love, family, connections. Something to give their life and blood meaning. Tamlin had that. He had that in spades. And I was too ignorant to try and see it. 

What did I have? Sisters I never talked to anymore, though I sometimes tried. Bad memories. Friends--great friends--but nothing like what Tamlin had... 

I'd never questioned it before. Why was Tamlin with  _me_? What made him stay? Obligation? A warm body? Possessiveness? 

It was already dark here in the mountains. So dark it was hard, sometimes, to see the vapors of breath coming from my mouth. Or… no, I wasn’t warm enough _to_ show my breath. I held the air in my lungs for as long as possible for exhaling, just to see the white puff leave and dissolve. Eventually, even that trick lost its ability. I was beyond shivering. Beyond recognizing the cold or the numbness of my rubbery skin. When had that happened?

It was dark and I was tired. Going to Cabin 7 wasn’t an option right now, though. Not without confronting them, without begging to go somewhere else. Didn’t Lucien and Jesminda have another cabin? Why did they use 7 tonight? For the past three days I’d been sleeping alone in it. Now I had nowhere.

I closed my eyes, hugging my hands between my thighs with my legs pressed to my chest to keep warm in a cold I hardly felt. I’d doze a little, then I’d go to Cabin 7. Once there was a faint promise of clothes or maybe naked bodies under the sheets. The cold always wakes me up in the middle of the night if the window is open… just a little while…an hour or two…

\---

I woke up to a horrible, biting pain in my hands. My eyes were so heavy though. Glued shut by ice crystals and Jack Frost’s breathe. I groaned to show my displeasure and moved to curl up into myself again…

\---

Someone was yelling. Really loudly. I tried to ask them to shut up by my tongue wasn’t my tongue anymore. Hands grabbed me and I was limp in them, heavy. _Go away_ , I thought. _I’m tired. A few more minutes and I’ll get the key…_

\--

The pain was so intense that it woke me up before my screams did. Fire—fire was everywhere. It licked at my skin and drove itself into my veins like molten lava. My toes were stabbed with the flames, my fingers, my bones. As if I was a witch tied to the stake, and the pyre was burning under me. I flailed to make the flames go away and water splashed instead, hot, heavy, boiling water—

“Hey, hey.” Rhysand was suddenly _there_. His hands were on my wet, burning wrists and his demanding flower eyes holding mine. “Shhh… darling, you're okay—”

“It _hurts!_ ” I screamed. “It hurts!” I didn’t fight him though. I was beyond fighting the flames. They’d reduced me to ashes inside and I was nothing but nerves and tears and fear.

“I know it does, shhh, I know. Jesus Christ, you don’t know how lucky you are to be feeling this pain right now. A little while longer and I don't even want to know what would have happened.” And his eyes said that was the truth. They spoke of fear and grief and I didn’t understand why.

“What?” I was shaking. Why was I shaking when I was burning? It was strange, violent tremors that almost felt like entire body twitches, only in different parts of my body. My shoulders would jerk, muscles in my thighs would wiggle, my forearms would pulse—all at different times, all without meaning.

“Yeah, Freya. You were outside in negative 10 degree weather. You fell asleep, you idiot.” He sighed and released my wrists, bringing them back into the flaming water. I looked down to watch it wave and pool against the sides of the claw-footed tub. The water was clear and I could see my naked body through the waving distortion. My breasts and tightened into balls and my nipples were so hard they were painful. My stomach was making the oddest movements in their tremors. Every hair follicle and pore in my body was tight and raised up with goosebumps. “I’m… naked.” I was naked. In front of a man I hardly knew.

“Yeah, your clothes kind of make getting warm impossible.” Rhysand stood up, dominating over me with his height and muscle before receding to the other side of the bathroom. “I’m sorry about that violation. I promise, it’s not sexual.”

“Of c-c-c-course n-n-not!” Why, now, of all times, could I not speak right? Three seconds ago I could, now I was shaking too bad to speak.

“Shit, I’m going to have to turn the water temperature up.” Rhysand came rushing back over.

“No! It’s hot enough!”

“No, it’s really not. This isn’t even lukewarm. Your internal temperatures are just—stop fighting me.” He slapped my hands away from the water dials to let burning water fall onto my feet. I jerked my feet back so my knees rested against my chest. “This sucks but it’s better than dying, right?”

“S-s-s-s-” Fuck it. I tried to convey my displeasure with a glare. It worked, apparently, because Rhysand chuckled and splashed scalding water up at my knees. “Pussy.”

“Th-th-th-that!” That was a rude, vulgar term meant to devalue women! As if being scared had _anything_ to do with a women’s reproductive organ. I kicked the water out at him, not understanding that I couldn’t quite control my limbs. As the water hit him full force in the face, my ass slipped and I went under the burning, eating water. It was the strangest, worst sensation I’d ever felt in my life. A deep, horrible thing that came from within as well as from without and was impossible to ignore. It changed, sometimes becoming a sharp pain, then a dull pain, then a twisting pain, then a half remembered pain, but always that sharp hating sting of a burn. As if my body was unwilling to be lulled by a normal pattern of feeling and be put into a false sense of security.

Being put into that kind of pain from the face down? I knew what biblical hell was supposed to feel like.

Rhysand’s hands grabbed my shoulders and lifted me up. I couldn’t even breath it hurt so bad, couldn’t cough or blink. Instead, I just shook. I watched the evil water ripple from the wake up my rising. “It’ll be all right. You’re stronger than this pain.” His callused fingers whipped my hair back, pushing the water from my face. “Be brave, Freya.”

There was no more braveness left in me. It was all burned away. How though, I couldn't remember. I knew how I got here but I'd lost myself along the way.

“Uhh… Dad?” I couldn’t look up at the soft, child’s voice from the doorway. I couldn’t even try to cover myself in case his perspective let him look inside the tub.

“What is it Azriel?”

“Cassian says she’s going to die.”

“Your brother is a dick.”

The child’s voice suddenly yelled, “Cassian, Dad says you’re a dick!”

“Tattletail!” A little voice answered.

“Don’t—” Rhysand sighed. “Did you call the doctor like I asked?”

“Yeah, Madja was really pissed. She says to tell you she’s a vet, not a human doctor.”

“She’s coming though, right?”

“I think so?” Again, the little boy yelled, “Cassian, is Madja coming?”

“Yeah!” Another little voice yelled.

“She’s coming.” The boy—Azriel—said.

“Okay. Go… go make our guest here some hot chocolate.” The words were hardly out of Rhysand’s mouth before little footsteps were running away. “Feyre.” He said, so close that his breath added another painful layer of burning ache across my cheek. “Breathing, Feyre. Breathe.” I didn’t—couldn’t—there was only shaking left in me.

“Like this.” His hand grabbed mine, effortlessly controlling it’s flailing to put it on his wet, soaking chest. The wet clothes were cold and felt good on my burning skin. “Like this.” His chest went up, then down. “Come on, with me.” Up, then down. I tried to suck in a painful breathe. It released the pressure in my chest so I tried again, and again. Eventually I could follow his smooth, controlled motions. “That’s it darling, just like that.”

“Dad, can I come in?”

"I don't think that's a good idea, bud." He moved to stand up, putting his hand on the lip of the tub.

"I can help!" He begged. "I'll close my eyes, promise. I just want to help." I turned jerkily to see the little figure in the doorway. He had Rysand’s black hair. Pale skin covering delicate, porcelain features. Dark, surprising eyes. He couldn’t have been older than seven and he carried a large, steaming cup in both hands.

Rhysand looked at me again, a 'what can you do' expression clearly visible on his face. He said, “Alright, if you close your eyes."

"I've seen naked ladies before." The boy said, solemn. But his eyes were closed and he was walking forward with tiny little steps.

"Oh yeah? Where?" 

"It was on TV. You thought I was asleep but I wasn't. She was the dragon lady--on that TV show you really like."

Rhysand cursed softly under his breath before slowly encouraging his son to take steps forward. “The floor is wet right in front of you so be careful to place your feet.”

“Okay.” He did just that though, looking like a dancer as he carefully made his way the tub, his eyes squeezed tightly shut.

“Thank you.” Rhysand said, taking the cup from his son’s hands. He put it on the wet floor before turning his son around by his ribs. “Go do something.”

“I want to help.” Azriel said, not turning around.

“You can help by going back to bed.”

“But dad—”

“Don’t be stupid, Azzie, you can’t do anything!” Another little voice said. I saw another boy—bigger, maybe two years older—with dirty blond hair and rounder features standing in the doorway. He had his father’s square jaw and size, but other than that I could see no similarity. He must look after his mother. “Your such a baby.”

“Cassian. Enough. You don’t talk to your brother like that.”

“He _is_.” Cassian stood on his toes, trying to look in the tub. “He can’t see a naked lady yet, he’s too babyish.”

“Neither can you!” Rhysand stood up and stalked over to them. “Out! If you can't act like adults you don't need to be in an adult situation.”

It was obvious that Rhysand must not get angry with them very often. Azriel tripped on water to get away and Cassian looked gutted in a way only children could look gutted. As if a harsh, angry word had changed his limited life view by miles. In seconds, they were both gone. “Shit.” I watched Rhysand put a hand through his hair. “That was…” He looked back at me, grief in his beautiful eyes.

I’d been yelled at a lot as a child. Never by my father or mother, but often by my older sister who had taken care of me once our mom died. She’d tried her best but she’d never been warm or fuzzy on good days, much less when stress was on her—which it always was when we were growing up. I understood her better as an adult but it didn’t mean that I didn’t still resent her for her treatment. That I still didn’t understand, really, what it meant to be held and loved and secure.

“G-g-g-g-”

Rhysand didn’t need to hear it all. The relief was wonderful in his eyes. “You sure? I need to go apologize—okay. Warm that water up, though.” He pointed to the tub. “I’ll be right back. Five minutes.” And then he was gone, nearly running out of the bathroom after his children.

He was a good father. A caring, warm father. That was another thing to add to the mystery of Rhysand. Because of that—or because I recognized its necessity—I reached forward and grabbed the nob. It was weird to touch with my fingers, as if my fingers weren't my fingers at all but painful, swollen little numbs. And they  _were_ swollen, painfully so, curled up like fat sausage claws. I needed to grab the nob with both of my palms just to turn it and let the hot liquid spill into the tub. I unplugged the bottom to make sure it didn’t overflow and eventually the fire was back at full force as I shook away ache in my bones.

What would I have done, who would I be if I’d had a happy childhood? If my mother had stayed around to love me. If my father hadn’t been so neglectful? If I’d lived, happy and healthy with them, just another girl with her mean older sister and absent-headed younger sister. Maybe I’d have cared about making friends more, maybe had happier thoughts, better relationships. Maybe I’d see the world as less of a scary, dominating place. Maybe all the bitter anger I channeled to feministic power and self-righteous judgements would be gone. Instead of believing that I could see the world for what it was—this monstrous place of abusers and abuses—I could see the brighter, happier things in life. People just trying their best. People got stressed and yelled and acted absently-cruel but wanted to make it up.

The boy who grabbed my face and told me everything was going to get better… was making it better by being back in my life. Was it pathetic of me to latch onto him because he was a kind, handsome man? Because he offered the love and security I desperately needed? I hardly knew him… yet he’d saved my life, seen me naked, and shown me how much he loved his kids. Wouldn’t it be heartless and cruel to _not_ be a little in love with that?

But no. He was a stranger I'd leave one the trip was done. Admiration was as far as I could go.

I hummed under my breath to keep the silence away. I tried to shake my body in a way that caused the water to slosh against the sides of the tub in a rhythmic beat. The tub had to be filled up again—then again—and the water started to feel less like and just… not enough. It couldn’t warm me. I couldn’t be warm. My skin was turning red from the contact, almost as red as my hands, and steam was everywhere, but I still couldn’t be warm. It was deep in me, a cold, restless wind.

“What—Feyre?” Rhysand came in from the fog the tub had created. A big, hulking figure with expressive eyes. “You didn’t have to—Jesus, your red—” He reached into the water and hissed as his fingers jerked out. “Get out. Right now. Get out.”

“Nooo.” I groaned, still shaking but relieved to have my voice back. “I’m so-so cold.”

“I know darling, I know. I’ll warm you up, you just need to get out of that water.” He held out a hand and helped me get out of the tub. The steam was so cold against my skin and I tried to huddle into him for warmth, but he pushed me away. “A towel—you need—” He reached behind him and came up with a fuzzy pink towel he wrapped around my shoulders. It was so big it covered me nearly to the knees. “There we go—another for the hair—” and then a big, fluffy towel was on my head and he was roughly tossing me about from side to side to get my hair dry. I tried to protest with a sound but he just rubbed harder. “I know, I know. We’ll get you warm.”

“I-isn’t there a d-doctor?” I asked, freeing my head from his shaking.

“What? Yeah, Madja. She lives about twenty miles away though and the roads aren’t plowed. She’ll have to put chains on her truck and even then—it’s probably dangerous enough she’ll just call me to recommend treatment or an air lift. Not that the weather will really allow for an air lift. The winds picking up with the snow.”

“S-So death then.” I teased.

“You’re not going to die.” There was something immensely pleasing about him rolling his eyes. “Come on, let’s get you some clothes on and—and body heat. That’ll help. Boys!” He roared. Instantly feet were slamming against the floor as they rushed forward. “Come on, let’s get you into some clothes already.” Instead of letting me follow him into the bedroom outside the door, though, he made me stay in the bathroom—for its “stupid humidity”—and closed the door behind him. I could faintly hear him talking to his children about grabbing their favorite pillows and preparing to sleep in his bed tonight. They seemed excited by the idea.

He came back with a tank top that swam on me and a large t-shirt that also swam on me. The pants he gave me were just ridiculous and dragged against the floor. “Shit.” He said, his fist to his mouth as he tried to hide his smile. “You look like one of my damn kids.”

“D-don’t you have small-ler clothes?”

“Naw, I have some of Malinda’s old clothes lying around for the boys—but nothing comfortable and nothing that would fit you any better. You’re a little woman.” He pushed me out of the bathroom.

I was going to disagree with him when the bedroom’s cold hit me like a wall. The air was punched at out of me. I pressed my burning, aching claw-fingers to my chest, as if somehow that would protect me from the cold.

“Come on, get into bed.” He shoved me towards the huge King in the middle of the room. One of the boys—Cassian—was already in the middle, holding his feet in his footsie pajamas.

“I’m Cassian.” He said. He had his father’s eyes.

“F-F-Feyre.”

“Weird name. Nice to meet you.” Two of his teeth were missing as he gave a huge, blinding child’s smile.

“I-” I didn’t know what to do. Rhysand pushed me towards the bed again so I sat on the corner, holding my aching claws and trying not to let my teeth clatter as I shivered.

“No no— _in_ bed.” Rhysand practically picked me and threw me towards the center. “You need body heat. I’ll be behind, Cassian and Azriel will be in front.”

“Dad say’s were here to prove there’s no funny business!” Cassian said cheerfully.

“Yeah, no funny business.” Rhysand gave a heavy look at that, trying to convey the seriousness of that statement. “No taking advantage, no reason to worry. This is purely to make sure you get warm.” And honestly, despite the strangeness, despite the fact that I was a strange woman going to bed with a man and his children—as if we were a _family_ —I was okay with it. As long as I got warm.

I crawled fully into the middle and Cassian snuggled up into my chest. He grabbed my clawed hands in his tiny little ones and blew hot child’s breath onto them over and over again. “Warm! Be warm!” He yelled, right into my face.

I couldn’t help but smile, despite the fact that my hands felt even worse for his breathing. “You’re doing a really good job.”

“Yeah?” He beamed again, exposing his missing baby teeth. “Dad says that we can help with this. He was really upset before ‘cus you were naked and he was stressed but he says that he should do that and it wasn’t okay. He said we can help with this.” I nodded and that seemed to be the only reply he needed. “I’m really good at keeping warm, honest. And I’m good at sleepovers. Everyone says. I don’t even snore. Not like Azriel.”

“Hey!” Azriel said, climbing into bed behind me. “I don’t snore.”

“Do too.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

“And I’m going to end that before it really begins. Az, go sleep next to Cassain.”

“But I wanna help!” Azriel whined.

“Then put your pillow at the other end of the bed and keep her legs and feet warm. You wanna do that?”

“Fine.” Azriel threw his pillow down at the head of the bed, then his little body. His body was so light it didn’t even move the mattress.

 “Are you okay with this?” Rhysand asked. “I didn’t—I kind of assumed—one word and we’ll—shit. I didn’t even consider calling up Spring—”

“No!” I turned to look at him in the doorway of the bathroom, having turned off the light. “No!” I didn’t want Tamlin here. I didn’t want to face the questions or have him look at me and _know_ I’d failed at taking in his family. At accepting him—the real him—and joining him and Lucien and Jasminda. I couldn’t handle him knowing how much of a coward I was. Not now.

“Don’t cry.” Cassian’s little hand slapped my cheek without any force, splattering tears. “It’s okay. We’re good warmers.”

“What do you want, Feyre? If you don’t want me to call Spring, do you want to be put in front of the heater? Sleep by a fireplace? What?”

I wanted… this. I wanted soft sleeping little bodies. I wanted a comfortable mattress that smelled like fresh sheets and something strangely sweet. I wanted comfort and a man who corrected his mistakes. I wanted help. God, how long had it been since I'd even asked for help? I did everything on my own, consulted no one. But I wanted it now from Rhysand and Cassian and Azriel. I wanted to be around them and--and maybe by watching Rhysand, I’d figure out how to correct my own mistakes. “This is fine.” I said. When he still looked doubtful, I begged him. "Please, Rhysand. Please, this is great. I promise  _I_ won't take advantage." 

“C’mon dad, she’s still shaking.” Cassian said, patting my cheek again with his little hand.

“All right. Just don’t come filling some kind of sexual harassment suit in the morning.” Rhysand, looking tired, turned off the bedroom lights. Darkness was everywhere for all of five seconds before Azriel’s little voice was sighing heavily. 

“I don’t like the dark, dad.” He informed. As it if was the most obvious thing in the world.

“I know, I know. Sorry Az.” Rhysand opened the bedroom door up and let the hall light on. “Better?”

“Little more?” Rhysand opened the door a little more. “That’s good.”

“Good.” Rhysand’s dark shadow came forward. His weight dipped the bed and I found myself holding my breath again as he came in under the bed covers. The weight of his arm around my stomach was _not_ light, and neither was he when he curved into my back, leaning against me a little. I noticed he did that so his hips were facing the bed, instead of my ass. “Everyone good?”

“Yup.” Cassian said.

“Az?”

“Good.” He already sounded half asleep.

“Feyre?”

I could only nod. That sweet smell in the sheets was from Cassian. And Azriel, too, no doubt. Children had a strange smell to them. Like sugar and bubble baths. I couldn’t help but admire the smell in Cassian’s blond hair. Me curving over him had him snuggling deeper into my chest and, to accommodate his little body, I rearranged my arms so his head was on my bicep and my arm was around his frame.  His head nuzzled into my palm and sent shooting, fiery pain into me--but it was worth it. So worth it.

And it was so… what was the word for this feeling? Was the comfort I was getting from this? I had no idea. I’d never experienced it before. Never experienced being so physically worn out and cold, so emotionally frayed, yet… content. It was softer than happiness and heavier than it, too. If joy was like a solid yellow color, giddiness was a brittle, wavy thing. If happiness was being totally present in the moment and finding beauty in it all… what was this? What was the feeling of being through hell and back and happy just to be here, sinking softly into darkness as little snores sounded and a tiny body breathed hot air into my shoulder. What was the feeling of feeling so very tiny and protected by big arms and a big frame that had no intention of treating me in a sexual way?

I used to sleep with my sister’s. After our mom died, we’d all huddle in together to take comfort. It never felt like this, though.  I’d never once felt like this.

It was perfect, is what it was. Even if I did know that it would all shatter in the morning and I'd never have  _this_ again. It was still perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got some superficial frostbite my first year living with snow 'cus I was walking around trying to figure out how to get to the convenience store and I didn't want to go the long way on the road--instead I walked through a large field of snow. The convenience store was closed and I wasn't even cold anymore so I kept walking around looking for a place to get coffee. It was dumb but I was so bored being cooped up at home in a new city where I didn't know anybody. In the end I ended up taking a bath that felt like goddamn fire and went to the ER the next day to get antibiotics, pain meds, and wraps for my toes. I tried to recapture that as much as I could but it was a really, really long time ago.

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm going to make this into a four part series when I find the time. ^w^


End file.
